It should first however be pointed out that though we Christians affirm that crucifixion was a form of capital punishment made use of in days of old, and abolished the fourth century after Christ by Constantine because Jesus was so executed, we cannot exactly prove that the _staurosis_ thus abolished was crucifixion, or even that it included crucifixion. For various as are the different forms of 'death by the stauros' of which descriptions have come down to us from pre-Christian ages and the first three centuries of our era, no relic of that date bears a representation of an instrument of execution such as we cause to appear in our sacred pictures, and even if, regardless of the more exact meaning of the word stauros, we suppose the term staurosis to have included every form of carrying out the extreme penalty by means of affixion or suspension, we meet with no description of such an instrument of execution as we picture. Therefore even if we were to exclude from the staurosis abolished by Constantine all forms of transfixion by a stauros, we could not, upon the evidence before us, fairly say that what that astute Emperor abolished was what is usually understood by the term crucifixion. It will not be necessary to quote again the admission of the Reverend S. Baring-Gould, M.A., to the effect that the so-called Cross of Constantine or monogram of Christ was but the symbol of the Sun-God of the Gauls with a loop added by their crafty leader to please the Christians, but it may be pointed out that this fact is also admitted in _Chambers's Encyclopaedia_; where we read that "The so-called cross of Constantine was not really a cross but a circle containing the X P I, the first three letters of the name of Christ in Greek; and was merely an adaptation of a symbol of a Gaulish solar deity." And it may be added that the fact that the Monogram of Christ and the ordinary cross so frequently used as symbols by Constantine upon his coins and elsewhere, and thus made symbols of the Roman Empire in the first half of the fourth century, were at first Pagan rather than Christian symbols, also seems to be borne out by Dean Burgon in his _Letters from Rome_, where he states "I question whether a cross occurs on any Christian monument of the first four centuries."[70] Passing on however to the representative works on Christian Art already referred to, we first come to Mrs. Jameson's famous _History of Our Lord as exemplified in works of art_. Upon page 315 of Volume II. the gifted authoress, after confessing that the cross was venerated by the heathen as a symbol of Life before the period of Christianity and referring to St. Chrysostom, who flourished half a century after Constantine, admits that